The present invention relates to a system capable of producing various kinds of examination papers and automatically marking them after an examination.
In education facilities including schools and private schools, examinations are frequency given in order to determine the result of learner's efforts, to rate the standing based on the result, to give a qualification, or to select new students. It has been customary for a teacher or similar examiner to prepare questions and an original document and produce a necessary number of examination papers by using a copier or simple printing machine, or hands it over to a trader concerned for printing. Also used in the education facilities are examination papers produced by a trader and printed with questions prepared by the trader. After examination, such papers are usually marked by an examiner, e.g., teacher. In the event of an examination for entrance or qualification or a large-scale trial examination, papers are marked by a number of persons or by an automatic marking system using a computer. It is also a common practice to total the results of marking of numerous examinees by use of a computer so as to calculate a mean percentage or deviations or tabulate or graph the results.
However, considerable labor is necessary for the examiner to prepare examination papers by himself, particularly when an examination is conducted often. For this reason, a majority of examinations given in primary schools, for example, are implemented by papers purchased from traders of concern. This brings about a problem that when an examination using such papers is conductive in one school, information on the examination is leaked out at, for example, a private school before the same papers are used in another school. Moreover, marking papers by hand is time- and labor-consuming and, therefore, inefficient and, in addition, apt to result in errors. On the other hand, for automatic marking, papers in the form of marking sheets are predominant on which blank marks are printed beforehand to be painted by examinees. This kind of scheme is not desirable since questions must be answered in an extremely simple and limited way. Further, the automatic marking system is not practicable without an exclusive and high-speed apparatus capable of reading a number of papers and marking them in a short period of time. Such an apparatus needs a large capacity memory which increases the cost. In addition, since the automatic marking apparatus is large scale and requires special manipulation, it is not feasible for schools and private schools.